Public Speaking

Dr. Bekey is a frequent speaker to professional, corporate and lay audiences on advances in robotic technologies, along with their competitive, societal and ethical implications. Presentations for business audiences include:

• The Robot Doctor Will See You Now: Status and Potential of Robotics in Healthcare
• Beyond R2D2: Robots in Imagination and Reality.
• Coexisting with Computers: Answers and Questions.
• The Worldwide Technology Race: Are we losing our competitive edge?

Among his recent technical presentations:

2007

• Commencement speaker, Cal Poly mid-year graduation (3,000 attendees), San Luis Obispo, CA
  • Event press release
  • Commencement speech text: "Of Camels and Computers” (pdf)
• "The Robot Doctor Will See You Now", Keynote speaker, Southern California Biomedical Industry Investors, Los Angeles, CA

2006

• "Co-existing with robots" Plenary lecture, Intelligent Robotic Systems Conf (IROS 2006), Beijing, China.
• "Robotic assistance in arm and leg function" Plenary address, IEEE BioRob 2006 conf, Pisa, Italy.
• "The WTEC World Survey of Robotics", Keynote address, National Science Foundation Workshop at International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2006, Orlando, FL.
• "Robotics: A Worldwide Status Report", Speaker, Northrop Grumman Corporation seminar, Dominguez Hills, CA.

2005

• "Multiple Robots: Systems of Systems", Keynote address, IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics conference, Hawaii.
• Multiple talks on Robotics, Speaker, Auckland University, New Zealand.
• "Legged robots: Applications and research issues", Speaker, Center for Control, Dynamical Systems and Computation , UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA.
• "Robotics: A Worldwide Status Report", Speaker, Northrop Grumman Corporation seminar, Dominguez Hills, CA.

2004

• "Sensors in Robotics", Speaker, BEI Corporation Board of Directors meeting, San Francisco, CA.
• "Intelligent mobile robots: A status report", Speaker, Distinguished Lecture Series, Computer Science Department, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN.
• "Trends and opportunities in robotics", Speaker, RoboNexus conference, San Jose, CA.
• "Rehabilitation robotics: Progress and problems", Speaker, IEEE International Conference on Robotics & Automation, Bio-Robotics workshop, New Orleans, LA.

2003

• "Intelligent Mobile Robots: Applications and commercial development", Plenary lecture, Automation 2003 conference, Taiwan.
• "Rehabilitation robotics: Progress and problems", Speaker, Health consortium, Portland, OR.